The anniversary of D-Day reminds us that 76 years ago, America fought fascism, landing on the shores of Normandy, France, to beat back the aggressive German fascist forces who were invading neighboring countries, killing Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and disabled people.
America was on a righteous cause to save the world from the Nazis — from Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco.
Today, patriotic Americans are verbally assaulted by the radical Left, which is calling the president and those support him fascists.
This is another aspect of the “cancel culture” tactic to make him toxic in the minds of voters. The Left is now comparing President Trump to Hitler — a man who laid waste to the lives of millions of non-Aryan people, primarily Jews, for whom he harbored a special hatred.
Fascism is not a specific thing, historians say, but a collection of actions informed by beliefs.
Wikipedia calls fascism “a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.”
Definitions for fascism historically have been all over the map, but none of the definitions have any resemblance to President Donald Trump or his millions of supporters.
Trump, before he became president, was not considered at all a “fascist” by the Left. He was rather mainstream, giving equally to Democrats as he did to Republican candidates. He was a clever New York businessman with an eye for pretty European women.
The conservatives on the Right didn’t particularly care for him back then. Trump lived a little too fast, and was a bit too crass for them. They were not at all sure about his stance on the Second Amendment or whether he truly would support an unborn baby’s right to life.
But, as he talked to the nation throughout 2016, his message of economic growth and freedom from Chinese economic threats resonated. He convinced enough Americans that he would protect our borders.
Americans in 2016 wanted jobs back. Trump brought them back from overseas. Americans wanted the unrelenting flow of illegals across the southern border stopped. Trump promised to build a wall. Americans wanted less regulation, lower taxes, and energy independence. Trump wanted those things too.
Trump said he would drain the swamp of the ruling class in Washington, D.C. And Americans thought he was the one to do it, if anyone could. He was not one of them; but an outsider. They gave him the right to try. Most of all, he was not Hillary Clinton, and that pulled him over the finish line in 2016.
But the playbook of Saul Alinsky has been at work to destroy him since the day he won.
First came the vagina-hat women and the “nasty women,” and the women’s marches, even on Inauguration Day.
The movie stars raged on stage about how fascistic Trump was. The Democrat women of the House and Senate wore all white when they sat and sneered at Trump’s State of the Union remarks. Other women stood around protest sites in costumes straight from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, to show how horribly oppressed women are in our era.
Antifa got its legs under it during the Trump years. The drumbeat that “the president is a fascist” began at the fringes of the movement, and wasn’t taken seriously until it became the mantra for the socialist movement that is now the Democratic Party.
The women’s marches began with the heaping of hate on the president — in 2017, 2018, and 2019, only fizzling out in 2020 when the pandemic and the election cycle coincided to send women to the world of Zoom with everyone else.
Celebrities like Colin Kapaernick jumped in, and pretty soon the Betsy Ross flag was as racist as the Confederate battle flag.
Then, came the neck on the knee of George Floyd, and police brutality captured for all the world to see. It was horrific, a display of sadism that cannot be excused.
The pent-up tensions in the black community, combined with sudden joblessness due to disease-fearing shutdowns and an unfurling economic crisis were the kindling. The brutal murder of George Floyd was the match.
At the same time, the phrase “fascist” had become a synonym for a Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat. In Fairbanks, a man was told to never come back to a coffee stand because of the MAGA hat he proudly wore. No shirt. No shoes. No fascists.
But long ago, America really knew what fascism was, stared it in the face, and killed it dead. This day in 1944, our young men stormed the beaches, with wave after wave of soldier dying in the surf, turning the sea red with their blood, so that the Allies could liberate the oppressed and put an end to the genocide in the Nazi concentration camps.
We cheapen the concept of fascism when we apply it to a lawfully elected president who has simply sought to govern in the way that he believes is best — a way to Make America Great Again.
Making the phrase “MAGA” into some kind of code language for fascism takes us down a dangerous road. While it’s not likely that the Left will tamp down the “fascist” rhetoric, they are sowing seeds that dishonor the hundreds of thousands of Americans who actually laid down their lives to create a free world and dismantle true fascism.
